WASHINGTON–America’s Credit Unions said it invested in numerous media channels to make its arguments in the lead-up to the passage of the giant reconciliation bill by Congress, but it’s an old standby that remains the “gold standard.”

The trade group opted to “invest in politics” in 2024, according to its president and CEO, Jim Nussle, and to be “much more definitive about the questions we asked candidates about the credit union tax exemption.

The Media Investment

To that end, according to Nussle, over the past year America’s Credit Unions invested in:

• Grassroots. This was primarily its “Don’t Tax My Credit Union” campaign, which Nussle said generated nearly one-million messages to Congress.  
• Social Media. “We were able to see quite a few deliverables in that regard,” Nussle said. “We’re still peeling that back to make sure as we go forward we can we can deploy that in the future and have a strong showing.”
• Paid Media. Nussle said ACU had a “drum beat” of paid media that exceeded anything other industries were doing in the lead-up to the vote on the reconciliation bill, especially financial services.”
• Data. “That is an investment that we will continue to need to employ and deploy, but one that is not a one-size-fits-all,” said Nussle. “There were questions that came from staffs on the Hill and members of Congress that we were able to turn around very quickly, both at the national level as well as through our league partners.”

What Works Best?

In response to question from the CU Daily over which form of media works best, Nussle said it’s an old, dependable strategy.

“I wish I could tell you that with the paid media, the social media, that there was a silver bullet in there somewhere, something we’ve got to double in the future,” said Nussle. “I think that’s what I would refer to as more air cover, creating an atmosphere of positive messaging. But I still go back to the tried-and-true from I’ve seen it work in my own situation when I was a member of Congress and I’ve seen work time after time after time with other members of Congress, and that is the hand-to-hand combat of grassroots lobbying.”

The best results, continued Nussle, come when a “member of Congress has their local credit union member or leader or employees go to them, particularly if they’ve built a relationship over the course of a long period of time–which is why I talked about at GAC about digging your well before you’re thirsty.

The ‘Gold Standard’

“We’ve been digging that well for a long time. We’ve been creating and establishing relationships,” Nussle continued. “I saw people go in and talk to their members of Congress and their senators and they were calling each other by name and saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I remember that stat’ or ‘I remember that data point,’ or ‘I’ve visited your credit union and saw it first-hand.’ I’ve got to tell you that is still the gold standard and nobody else does it the way credit unions do it.”